Emotions trump reality as Ebola anxiety spreads

PAYNESVILLE, LIBERIA - OCTOBER 16: Ebola survivor James Mulbah, 2, stands with his mother, Tamah Mulbah, 28, who also recovered from Ebola in the low-risk section of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola ... more

PAYNESVILLE, LIBERIA - OCTOBER 16: Ebola survivor James Mulbah, 2, stands with his mother, Tamah Mulbah, 28, who also recovered from Ebola in the low-risk section of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment center after survivors' meeting on October 16, 2014 in Paynesville, Liberia. The virus has a 70 percent mortality rate, according to the World Health Organization, but leaves survivors immune to the strain that sickened them. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) less

Photo: John Moore, Staff

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Employees with Cleaning Guys Environmental carry equipment into North Belton Middle School in Belton on Friday as they prepare to disinfect the school.

Photo: Rusty Schramm, MBR

A Tomball mother planned to take her 9-year-old daughter on a cruise to the Bahamas for her birthday - until news broke that a nurse who had helped care for infected Ebola patients in Dallas was on the cruise liner they planned to board next month.

No way was Megan Jones taking her child - who suffers from a rare auto-immune disease, making minor infections life-threatening - on a ship with even the remotest possibility of contact with the infamous virus.

"I don't think anyone in the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or Carnival can 100 percent in writing say that the ship is OK to board for her, and that my daughter has no chance of getting sick," said Jones, 31, who is trying to get booked on a different cruise liner.

That's just one example of the fear and worry spreading with the virus that killed Liberian native Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas earlier this month. Duncan was the first patient diagnosed in the U.S. with the virus, which has since spread to two of his nurses.

Medical experts have repeatedly worked to dispel myths about the disease, stressing the slim chance of an outbreak here anywhere near the epidemic that has killed roughly 4,500 in West Africa. However, the wide media coverage the disease has received, along with its exoticism, have caused it to loom large in popular imagination.

"It piques our interest much more than something we could see every day, [like car crashes or flu deaths,]" said Temple Northup, a communications professor at the University of Houston. "We tend to be very emotional in how we make our decision-making process."

The personal stories associated with the Ebola virus resonate stronger than the statistics about how few cases there are in the U.S. The more readers consume news about Ebola, the more they may overestimate their chance of catching the disease.

"You're seeing it constantly," he said. "That's what's going to stick out in your memory, that's sort of what drives your assessment of what's your risk."

Memorable reactions

Across the country, fear of catching the virus remains fairly low: 23 percent of Americans were worried about getting the Ebola virus earlier this month, a recent Gallup poll found. But reports of extreme reactions by people to avoid the Ebola virus have been rife. A photo of a traveler wearing a homemade hazmat suit at Washington Dulles International Airport went viral last week, as did the story of flight attendants forcing a vomiting passenger to stay in an airplane lavatory. (American Airlines later said Ebola was not a concern, but that the sick passenger asked to stay in the bathroom.)

And in Syracuse, N.Y., officials at Syracuse University asked a Washington Post photographer who had traveled to West Africa to cover the outbreak not to attend a journalism workshop they'd invited him to, even though he has been symptom-free in the U.S. for more than the 21-day incubation period.

"Everyone agrees that there was probably a very small risk to our students," Lorraine Branham, a dean at the university, wrote in a letter earlier this week. "Still, our health experts suggested an 'abundance of caution' and we decided to take that advice. I was unwilling to take ANY risk where our students are concerned."

Schools in Ohio and Texas, including three campuses in Belton ISD, closed to disinfect after word that their students had flown on a plane with one of the nurses.

A male stripper in Texas gained notoriety after announcing that he was quarantining himself for 21 days after sitting near one of the nurses on a plane.

Dr. Michael Telch, a professor of psychology who studies anxiety disorders at the University of Texas at Austin, said that he has fielded nearly 20 calls, some late at night while he'd been sleeping, by patients anxious about the Ebola virus.

"It's a great example of threat overestimation," he said. "Unnecessary safety behaviors actually fuel false alarms, and make anxiety worse."

Closer to home, passengers aboard a cruise on the Carnival Magic set to dock Sunday morning in Galveston were turned away from Mexico and Belize because a Dallas health worker who handled blood drawn from Duncan during his treatment was on board.

A helicopter flew out to meet the ship Saturday to take a blood sample of the health care worker to see if she tested positive prior to the ship's docking.

In his weekly address, President Barack Obama urged Americans not to give in to "hysteria."

"We have to remember the basic facts," he said, reminding viewers that only three people had been diagnosed in the U.S., compared to the thousands of Americans who die every year from the flu.

Lacking perspective

But Jody Lanard, a New York-based risk communication consultant, said comparing fears about Ebola to "hysteria" was insulting and unhelpful.

"Officials want the public to put things into perspective before learning about [Ebola], and that's just impossible," she said. The fact that hospital officials were unable to recognize how ill Duncan was when he first arrived and the inability to prevent the disease from spreading afterward (or to stop health workers who had potentially been exposed to the virus from traveling) had further undermined public confidence, she said.

"They want you to skip the adjustment reaction, and they insult you when they tell you to put things in perspective without going through a normal 'oh my God' reaction," she said, later adding "people need to go through a reaction before they can settle down and figure out who to trust and who is competent."

In the meantime, Jones said she had to break the news to her daughter that they wouldn't be going on the cruise. Nine-year-old Samantha was disappointed, Jones said. She knew some might think she was overreacting.

"I don't feel like playing Russian Roulette with my kid's health," she said.

St. John Barned-Smith joined the Houston Chronicle in 2014 and covers public safety and major disasters, including floods, bombings and mass shootings. Barned-Smith came to the Chronicle after a stint in the Peace Corps and after reporting in Philadelphia and suburban Maryland. Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.